Energy management analysis and design for a 5 kW PEMFC distributed power system

The proton exchange membranes fuel cell (PEMFC) is known as a slow dynamic response application. The transient load power may bring damage to the stack and shorten lifetime of the fuel cell. In this paper, an energy management design, which consists of a bi-DC/DC converter and super capacitor, is introduced to compensate the slow dynamic response of the PEMFC power source. The energy management principle is analyzed. The controller and the filter design based on these analyses are given. The capacity of the auxiliary energy buffer is calculated. The Bi-DC/DC converter, as the hardware realization is then introduced. Finally, the experiment results on a 5 kW fuel cell power system with energy management are given to verify the theoretical analysis.